Chasing higher yields, investors pile into risky countries

WHERE can you find a 7% interest rate on a sovereign dollar-bond? You would have to take a time-machine to the mid-1990s to find such a yield on a ten-year American Treasury. Alternatively, you could slip back a few days to August 2nd and bid for the $1bn of five-year bonds sold by the government of Iraq. The yield was expected to be 7%, but it was trimmed to 6.75% once orders rose above $6bn.

Such eagerness for hard-currency debt from a country still reeling from a civil war shows just how far bond investors will now go to get a decent yield. Oversubscribed issues for risky sovereign bonds have become almost normal. The Iraqi sale came just a week after Greece (whose privately held debt was partly written off in 2012) raised €3bn ($3.5bn) in its first bond sale for three years. In June Argentina was inundated with bids for its 100-year eurobond, as dollar-denominated bonds are known. Sceptics noted that Argentina had defaulted on its debts six times in the previous century, with the most…Continue reading